Jeff Bezos’s Former Housekeeper Is Suing For Mistreatment Including The Lack Of Bathroom Breaks
Something is up with the billionaires. While Elon Musk decides to make Twitter even more of a hellscape for millions of users (and rack up some sweet lawsuits in the process), Jeff Bezos is keeping it a bit more localized and simply harassing his housekeeping staff. Ex-staff member Mercedes Wedaa slapped Bezos with a lawsuit accusing Bezos’s companies of racial discrimination and Bezos himself for barring her and her colleagues from taking rest breaks. She claims that access to bathrooms was particularly difficult and, in some cases, required climbing out the window. With previous news of Amazon workers peeing in bottles, it appears that Bezos genuinely doesn’t want us to piss!
Mercedes Wedaa was hired in 2019 as house coordinator at one of Bezos’s properties, managing other housekeepers. However, working for a billionaire wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be! The man who has enough money to go on joyrides to the moon thinks that the people taking a trip to the bathroom is a journey too far. via NBC News:
Wedaa was hired in fall 2019 for a housekeeping job that required her “to work around a family without being seen,” the civil action says.
She was hired as house coordinator and would eventually come to supervise a staff of housekeepers, nearly all of whom were Hispanic, according to the complaint.
In addition to extended work shifts as long as 14 hours with no breaks, there was “no reasonably accessible bathroom for the housekeepers,” the lawsuit says.
At one point, housekeepers were told to use a restroom attached to a security room where guards monitored security cameras on the property, the suit claims. However, that was soon stopped “because it was decided that housekeepers using the bathroom was a breach of security protocol,” according to the action.
“For about 18 months, in order to use a bathroom, Plaintiff and other housekeepers were forced to climb out the laundry room window to the outside,” the lawsuit claims. “Then, run along the path to the mechanical room, through the mechanical room and downstairs to a bathroom. This toilet was used by both men and women, for example grounds staff used it too.”
Those Quilted Northern rolls are expensive! You can’t just have anybody using them. Not only did Wedaa have to learn the magic ability to be invisible, she had to also play Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger every time nature called. Her reward for her services? According to the lawsuit, frequent UTIs. The suit also alleges that the mainly Hispanic staff were treated less favorably than the Caucasian employees.
Jeff Bezos and Zefram LLC and Northwestern LLC (the two other defendants in the lawsuit and Bezos’s property managers) have disputed Wedaa’s claim, with a source from Northwestern LLC stating that the suit is just a “money grab” and all staff members had ample access to break rooms and bathrooms. And when it comes to the discrimination allegations, well, Jeff Bezos pulled some “I can’t be racist against Hispanics since I’m dating one” shit by mentioning his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez.
“The evidence will show that Ms. Wedaa was terminated for performance reasons,” [Bezos’ attorney Harry] Korrell said. “Given their backgrounds, the suggestion that Mr. Bezos, Ms. Sanchez, or Northwestern LLC discriminated against Ms. Wedaa based on her race or national origin is absurd.”
You can’t discriminate when your girlfriend is Mexican American. The next time you plan on showing prejudice, remember you can always bring out your culturally different girlfriend/husband/neighbor/acquaintance from 6th grade to show you can’t be discriminatory. Works like a charm.
Pic: INSTARImages